Chagall

Page 4 : Self-Portrait, 1909oil on canvas, 57 x 48 cmKunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldort

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“The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense ofwonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methodsof stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against acontinual tendency to sleep.”

– Marc Chagall

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7 July 1887 Marc Zakharovich Chagall, the son of a fish vendor, was born in Vitebsk.

1906 Studied at the art school of Yuri Pen in Vitebsk, leaving for St. Petersburg in the winter.

1907-1910 Studied at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, St.

Petersburg (then directed by Nicholas Roerich) and the private school of S. Saidenberg;

entered the private art school of Yelizaveta Zvantseva, where he studied under Léon

Bakst and Matislav Dobuzhinsky. Showed his works at the school exhibition held in the

office of the magazine Apollon.

1910-1914 Lived in Paris, on the Impasse du Maine. In 1911, moved to La Ruche. Met Pablo Picasso,

Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Amedeo Modigliani, Alexander Arkhipenko, Guillaume

Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, and other famous artists and writers. Exhibited

at the Salon des Independants and the Salon d’Automne in Paris, with the Donkey’s Tail

group in Moscow, at Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin (first one-man show) and also in St.

Petersburg and Amsterdam. On the eve of the war, returned to Vitebsk.

July 1915 Married Bella Rosenfeld.

1915-1917 Worked in Petrograd, served on the military-industrial committee. Exhibited in Moscow

and Petrograd.

1916 Birth of his daughter Ida.

1918-1919 Appointed Commissar for the Arts in the Regional Department of People’s Education in

Vitebsk. Set up and ran (from early 1919) an art school in Vitebsk, where the teachers

included Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Ivan Puni and Kasimir Malevich. Headed the Free

Painting Workshop (Svomas) and the museum. Organized the celebrations in 1918 for

the first anniversary of the October Revolution. Took part in the First State Free

Exhibition held in the Winter Palace, Petrograd.

1920-1921 Conflict with Malevich and Lissitzky forced Chagall to leave Vitebsk. He lived in and

near Moscow, producing works for the Jewish Chamber Theatre and teaching in the

Malakhovka and Third International colonies for homeless children. Began work on the

book My Life.

1922 Joint exhibition in Moscow with Nathan Altman and David Sterenberg.

1922-1923 Travelled to Kaunas with an exhibition of his works. Visited Berlin and Paris. Settled in

Paris in September 1923. Produced etchings for My Life and began work on illustrations

to Gogol’s Dead Souls.

1926 One-man shows in Paris and New York.

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Biography

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1930-1931 Worked on illustrations for the Bible. Travelled to Switzerland, Palestine, Syria and

Egypt. Exhibitions in Paris, Brussels and New York.

1933 At Goebbels’ command, Chagall’s works were burnt in public in Mannheim.

Exhibition in Basle.

1935 Visited Poland.

1937 Granted French citizenship. Travelled to Italy.

1939 Carnegie Prize (USA).

1940 Moved to the Loire and then to Provence.

1941 Arrested in Marseille and then freed. Moved to the USA.

1942 Worked for theatres in the USA and Mexico.

1944 Death of Bella Chagall in New York.

1945 Set designs and costumes for Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird.

1946 Exhibitions in New York and Chicago.

1947 Exhibition at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris.

1948 Returned to France. Publication of Dead Souls with illustrations by Chagall. Exhibitions

in Amsterdam and London. Travelled widely in this and the following years.

1950 Moved to Vence, near Nice. Worked on lithographs and ceramics.

1951 First stone sculptures. Large exhibitions in Bern and Jerusalem.

1952 Married Valentina Brodsky. Visit to Greece.

1953-1955 Major exhibitions in Turin, Vienna and Hanover.

1956 Publication of the Bible with illustrations by Chagall.

1957 Began work on stained-glass windows (for Assy, Metz, Jerusalem, New York, London,

Zurich, Reims, Nice). Exhibitions of graphic works in Basle and Zurich.

1959 Murals in the foyer of the Theatre in Frankfurt am Main. Exhibitions in Paris, Munich

and Hamburg.

1963 Exhibitions in Japan.

1964 Ceiling paintings in the Opera in Paris. First mosaics and tapestries.

1966 Moved to Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Painted murals in the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

1969-1970 Foundation of the Musée Chagall in Nice. Major retrospective exhibition

at the Grand Palais in Paris.

June 1973 Trips to Moscow and Leningrad at the invitation of the USSR Ministry of Culture.

July 1973 Opening of the Musée Chagall in Nice.

October 1977 Exhibition of paintings produced between 1967 and 1977 in the Louvre.

1982-1984 Major exhibitions in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Paris, Nice, Rome and Basle.

28 March 1985 Marc Chagall died at Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the ninety-eighth year of his life.

1987 Major exhibition of Chagall’s works in Moscow.

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Through one of those curious reversals of

fate, one more exile has regained his native

land. Since the exhibition of his work at the

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow in 1987

which gave rise to an extraordinary popular

fervour, Marc Chagall has experienced a

second birth.

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Kermis

1908

oil on canvas, 68 x 95 cm

Wright Ludington Collection Santa Barbara

(California, USA)

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My Fiancée in Black Gloves

1909

oil on canvas, 88 x 65 cm

Kunstmuseum, Basle

Here we have a painter, perhaps the most

unusual painter of the twentieth century, who at

last, attained the object of his inner quest: the

love of his Russia. Thus, the hope expressed in

the last lines of My Life, the autobiographical

narrative which the painter broke off in 1922

when he left for the West – “and perhaps Europe

will love me and, along with her, my Russia” –

has been fulfilled.

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Self-Portrait

1909

oil on canvas, 57 x 48 cm

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

A confirmation of this is provided today by

the retrospective tendency in his homeland

which, beyond the all-in-all natural re-

absorption of the artist into the national culture,

also testifies to a genuine interest, an attempt at

analysis, an original viewpoint which enriches

our study of Chagall.

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The Artist’s Sister (Mania)

1909

oil on canvas, 93 x 48 cm

Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne

Contrary to what one might think, this study

is still dogged by uncertainties in terms of

historical fact. As early as 1961 in what is still

the main work of reference, Franz Meyer

emphasised the point that even the establishment

of, for example, a chronology of the artist’s

works, is problematic.

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Sabbath

1910

oil on canvas, 90 x 98 cm

Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne

In fact, Chagall refused to date his

paintings or dated them a posteriori.

A good number of his paintings are

therefore dated only approximately and to this,

we must add the problems caused to Western

analysts by the absence of comparative

sources and, very often, by a poor knowledge

of the Russian language.

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The Wedding

1910

oil on canvas, 98 x 188 cm

collection of the artist’s family, France

Therefore, we can only welcome such recent

works as that of Jean-Claude Marcadé who,

following the pioneers Camilla Gray and

Valentina Vassutinsky-Marcadé, has underlined

the importance of the original source – Russian

culture – for Chagall’s work. One must rejoice

even more in the publications of contemporary

art historians such as Alexander Kamensky and

Mikhail Guerman with whom we now have the

honour and pleasure of collaborating.

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The Butcher

1910

gouache on paper, 34 x 24 cm

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Yet, Marc Chagall has inspired a prolific

amount of literature. The great names of our

time have written about his work: from the first

serious essay by Efros and Tugendhold, The

Art of Marc Chagall, published in Moscow in

1918 when Chagall was only 31, to Susan

Compton’s erudite and scrupulous catalogue,

Chagall, which appeared in 1985, the year of

the artist’s death.

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Jewish Wedding

1910s

pen and Indian ink on paper mounted on cardboard

20.5 x 30 cm

Z. Gordeyeva Collection, St. Petersburg

On the occasion of the exhibition at the

Royal Academy in London, there has been no

lack of critical studies, but all this does not

make easy our perception of Chagall’s art. The

interpretation of his works – now linking him

with the Ecole de Paris, now with the

Expressionist movement, now with Surrealism –

seems to be full of contradictions.

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Birth of a Child

1911

oil on canvas, 65 x 89.5 cm

collection of the artist’s family, France

Does Chagall totally defy historical or aes-

thetic analysis? In the absence of reliable

documents – some of which were clearly lost

as a result of his travels, there is a danger that

any analysis may become sterile. This

peculiarity by which the painter’s art seems to

resist any attempt at theorization or even

categorization is moreover reinforced by a

complementary observation.

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Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers

1911

oil on canvas, 128 x 107 cm

Royal Collection, The Hague

The greatest inspiration, the most perceptive

intuitions are nourished by the words of poets or

philosophers. Words such as those of Cendrars,

Apollinaire, Aragon, Malraux, Maritain or

Bachelard… Words which clearly indicate the

difficulties inherent in all attempts at critical

discourse, as Aragon himself underlined in

1945: “Each means of expression has its limits,

its virtues, its inadequacies.